Thoughts on Spider-Man and Comic Book Reality

So Newsarama has an article up, One More (More) Day? JMS Explains His Ending. I had heard, as had many of us, about how the author of "One More Day" was not happy about the way the story had been written. This piece has a bit more detail about that, and is worth reading.

Since my own concern for this story is based mainly on how it affects those non-Spider-Man titles I read, what I found most interesting here is the disagreement on whose preferred way of dealing with the issue (of dumping MJ) would cause the fewest problems with the rest of the Marvel universe and its continuity.

On the one hand,

Quesada also explained that he wasn’t comfortable with Straczynski’s method of retconning the marriage out of existence, saying: “Also, the science that Joe was going to apply to the retcon of the marriage would have made over 30 years of Spider-Man books worthless, because they never would have had happened. We would have also had a "Crisis" in the Marvel Universe because it would have reset way too many things outside of the Spider-Man titles. We just couldn't go there and in the end we weren't expecting that kind of story.

And on the other hand (a rebuttal from JMS),

What I wanted to do was to make one small change to history, a tiny thing, whose ripples we could control to only touch what editorial wanted to touch, making changes we could explain logically. I worked for weeks to come up with a timeline that would leave every other bit of continuity in place. It was rigorous, and as logical as I could make it.

Obviously I'm speaking from a place of ignorance here, but it does seem to me, from what I've seen online, that what was done is going to interfere with a lot of existing continuity. But if all the available options would do the same thing...well, wouldn't it have been simpler just not to do it at all?

I mean, I'm traditionally a Marvel reader, and while I've broadened my horizons, there are things I still prefer about the way Marvel tends to do things--among them the fact that they generally haven't done continuity reboots. I think that's a good thing.

Personally I have no problem with Tony Stark's origin taking place during the Viet Nam era, because...It's Comic Books! Dazzler started her musical career in disco? Why not, It's Comic Books! Batman eternally in his thirties while Dick Grayson surely nears that decade himself? Reed Richards and Ben Grimm veterans of WWII? Lois Lane in those pillbox hats? Not a problem--It's Comic Books! In fact, I think that's my answer to any of those pain-in-the-ass sliding-timeline things--it's not important because It's Comic Books!

I feel much better now.